I figured someone would take that the wrong way. Of course I don't hate humanity, nor think we should all be destroyed, but I am able to look at us dispassionately when I'm talking about Ecoculture. Purely from that standpoint, we're fuxing it up, undeniably so (Okay, denial is pretty strong with some people) and only in that context can I say that war, and murder are good things.

As a human being, they are of course counter to preserving myself, and our race, but that's pretty much the point. There should be a happy medium between our environment, and our lazy self centered greed. We don't have to be completely sociopathic toward the other species, their habitats, and where we put the byproducts of our supernatural technology, but that would require forethought, and actually caring about something other than ourselves.

It hurts to turn around, and look at it from the other side. The truly dispassionate, and mindless system we're alienating ourselves wouldn't give us a first thought if we comitted self genocide. That's the extent of our power, we can destroy ourselves, and some random species we take down with us, but Life itself will keep on going on, as carless of our own extinction as it was to the dodo, passenger pigeon, and so forth.

I'm not really that heartless, but the universe certainly is. It might not be a good idea to piss it off.

_________________"You can't have everything, where would you put it?" -Steven Wright.

By the way, resources are not limited. If they were, the human population would have been static years ago.

Or we just haven't hit the limit yet. Or the limit is a much more complicated thing than a simple cut-off, and we may temporarily exceed it by borrowing from the future or profiting from the past. Clean water for example is a resource that we're running out of rapidly. We're using rainwater that has collected over thousands of years in aquifers and draining them in a much shorter time period. While we're doing that, we can sustain a larger population, but once we're out it's over.

Oh sure, clean water will get more expensive, which will lower consumption because the poorest won't be able to afford it any more and die, and it may make more drilling and exploration economically feasible, but the fact remains that there's a finite amount of energy (stored and flux from the Sun) and matter available on our planet. Just because we haven't exhausted it yet doesn't mean that there's no limit.

edit: fixed formatting error

_________________Say, can you feel the thunder in the air? Just like the moment ’fore it hits – then it’s everywhereWhat is this spell we’re under, do you care? The might to rise above it is now within your sphereMachinae Supremacy – Sid Icarus

Last edited by Lourens on Mon May 27, 2013 5:26 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Decades ago, it was predicted that in the future, people will starve, because there won't be enough food. Then new technologies came along. There are many technologies that are conserving and reusing water, and making more potable water (Israel is a world leader in this). As to the ultimate limit, we haven't even scratched the surface of Earth's resources.

_________________“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” -Anonymous

However, these new technologies still need energy to run them. For example, a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that you need twice the power output of the world's largest nuclear power plant to power a desalination plant large enough to supply Isreal with all the drinking water it needs, if 1) Israel's population doesn't grow from current numbers, 2) per-capita water consumption in Israel remains at current levels and 3) desalination technology becomes a factor 10 more power-efficient than it currently is. You'll need about 6 tonnes of nuclear fuel per day to power those 2 nuclear plants (16 reactors).

It may work on the scale of Israel, but it's certainly not going to work for the whole world, and it's going to be a heck of a lot more expensive than simply drinking from a river...

_________________Say, can you feel the thunder in the air? Just like the moment ’fore it hits – then it’s everywhereWhat is this spell we’re under, do you care? The might to rise above it is now within your sphereMachinae Supremacy – Sid Icarus

However, these new technologies still need energy to run them. For example, a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that you need twice the power output of the world's largest nuclear power plant to power a desalination plant large enough to supply Isreal with all the drinking water it needs, if 1) Israel's population doesn't grow from current numbers, 2) per-capita water consumption in Israel remains at current levels and 3) desalination technology becomes a factor 10 more power-efficient than it currently is. You'll need about 6 tonnes of nuclear fuel per day to power those 2 nuclear plants (16 reactors).

It may work on the scale of Israel, but it's certainly not going to work for the whole world, and it's going to be a heck of a lot more expensive than simply drinking from a river...

First of all, in 1948, Israel's population was all of 300,000. In the 1960's -70's, it was about 3 million. Now it's seven million, and growing (thanks to a large birthrate, even among non-practicing Jews, thank G-d).

Secondly, desalination is a tiny part of the equation. There are sources of water, but they have to be taken care of. Things like drip irrigation, solar water heaters, and other ways of saving water and energy are much more important. These technologies are widely used throughout Israel, and in other countries as well.

Water and energy saving is much more important than anything else. These same technologies will have to be used in any space colony, by the way.

And Israel is an oasis in the middle of a desert. It didn't get there by accident (cue - Shir Hamaalot (a song of the ascents - on G-d's returning of the Jews to Zion)).

_________________“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” -Anonymous

A 42 inch "hot point" frensel lens focused on a point can easily produce 2200+ F on a area about the size of a penny.

Insolation on the Earth's surface is at most 1000W/m^2 under ideal conditions (clear day on the equator with the sun directly overhead), or about 250W/m^2 average (averaged over a year and the entire Earth). Your Fresnel lens has a surface area of pi*(21 in * 0.0254 m/in)^2 ~ 0.9 m^2.

Desalination is apparently about 3kWh/l with current technologies, and heating a litre of water from room temperature to the boiling point takes 4.2J/g/K * 1000 g * 80 K = 336kJ = 0.093kWh. So, to make a nice cup of tea (250ml) from sea water, you need (3 kWh/l + 0.093kWh/l) * 1/4 l = 0.77 kWh. Your Fresnel lens captures about 0.9 m^2 * 250W/m^2 = 225W of solar energy averaged over a year for an average location on Earth, so it takes you about 770/225 = 3.4 hours to capture enough energy for my cup of tea. That means that you can make about 7 cups of tea per day. May work in sub-Saharan Africa, where there is a lot of sun and little tea consumption, but it's going to be a hard sell in England .

edit: more formatting shenanigans

_________________Say, can you feel the thunder in the air? Just like the moment ’fore it hits – then it’s everywhereWhat is this spell we’re under, do you care? The might to rise above it is now within your sphereMachinae Supremacy – Sid Icarus

Last edited by Lourens on Mon May 27, 2013 5:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The frensel lens in my scheme, is used to "crack" another energy source,

Algae gasification,

I am not sure about what efficency the system has to have, when it's self assembeling to treat waste water, and then extracting the water from the algae to dry, yields pure water, and then the energy the algae captured from doin all this, is released using a threshold,

The frensel lens in my scheme, is used to "crack" another energy source,

Algae gasification,

I am not sure about what efficency the system has to have, when it's self assembeling to treat waste water, and then extracting the water from the algae to dry, yields pure water, and then the energy the algae captured from doin all this, is released using a threshold,

I am talking about shoring up loses, and fixing the underlying issue, water does evaporate, and move around,

But we don't need to use as much as we do, and we can power our lives using self assembeling tech,

to be frank, you would be urinating out the tea, and re-proccessing it, and using it+ the sun to get the power and water for the next cup,

Let me see the algae, and I'll tell you how it could work. They don't really need a condenser, unless you somehow develop a bug that can handle the energy density. It's generally better to just spread them out in a flat dish, or pipe it through an array you can tilt to follow the sun. Instead, you could do a level array (Assuming an aqueous algae) and use a mirror instead of a lens to redirect the sun at any angle. Fresnel condensers work better with photovoltaics.

_________________"You can't have everything, where would you put it?" -Steven Wright.

Okay, you didn't make that clear. So, you're going to use the heat from the concentrator (Doesn't have to be a fresnel lens, could just as easily be a Mirror) to vaporise the Algae, and then what? Recycle the gasses into some sort of fuel? You could just as easily take the Algae out of the equation and gassify water to run a turbine like standard Solar-thermal generators we already build. Then, you wouldn't need the collection surface for the algae, and could use it for other concentrators instead...

_________________"You can't have everything, where would you put it?" -Steven Wright.

The gasisifed algae are burned in a generator, then the C02 and h20 go back the photo bio reactor....

The idea is this

Water + people = waste water

Waste water + photobioreactor+sunshine = algae + clean water

Algae + solar drier = dry algae and distilled water

Dry algea + solor gasifier = Hydrogen and carbon monoxide

Generator + Hydrogen and carbon monoxide = c02 + water + energy

and the c02 + water goes back to the photobioreactor.

This is in fact a giant loop,the benifit here is it purifies water, and makes power, and sequesters carbon, and can potentailly make food, and it could also synthisies long chain chemicals using a catalyst.

the idea is that the amount of power the algae can collect is like a gaint self assembeling solar panel.

_________________Let not the bindings of society hold you back from improving it.... the masses follow where the bold explore.

You still need space though. Algae run on solar energy, and there's 250W/m^2 of it, so that's your maximum no matter what you use to convert it into a usable form.

_________________Say, can you feel the thunder in the air? Just like the moment ’fore it hits – then it’s everywhereWhat is this spell we’re under, do you care? The might to rise above it is now within your sphereMachinae Supremacy – Sid Icarus